


a part of me still wants you

by dearzoemurphy



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Post-Episode: s02e21 Paradigms of Human Memory, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25817767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearzoemurphy/pseuds/dearzoemurphy
Summary: They had never defined what they were. Putting a label on what they had been doing would mean admitting that they were doing something. And if it was something, that meant it would one day have to end.Songfic inspired by Promises by Beach Bunny. Canon divergent, takes places after Paradigms of Human Memory.
Relationships: Britta Perry/Jeff Winger
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	a part of me still wants you

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to write one of my usual shorter songfics for this request, but I tripped and fell onto my keyboard and this was the result. hope you all enjoy!

They had never defined what they were. Putting a label on what they had been doing would mean admitting that they were doing _something_. And if it was _something_ , that meant it would one day have to end.

So Jeff was blindsided when - despite refusing any and all labels - it ended. And it didn’t even end in a dramatic fashion or with any fanfare whatsoever. It ended with two awkward, forced smiles and a bitter ‘it’s you’ before going their separate ways. It shouldn’t have hit him as hard as it did. He didn’t expect to even care. And yet, for a bevvy of unexplainable reasons, he did.

Jeff had thought that he might drink himself into some sort of oblivion in order to better ignore the tangled mess of emotions he was currently experiencing. But instead of driving to L Street as he had intended to, he ended up driving himself straight home. He crashed into his place and stumbled into his kitchen, going straight to the back of his pantry; the home of a secret emergency stash of carbs and sweets for occasions such as this. Jeff decided that it was a Milano cookie day and stuffed the package under his arm, plodding across his apartment to crash onto his bed.

 _“Why did she get the last word in? I said that it wasn’t her, she wasn’t supposed to agree with me!”_ he thought, practically fuming as he tore open the package of cookies, _“It’s like she didn’t even have any real feelings for me! …not that I had any for her, I guess.”_

He angrily munched on a cookie, rolling over onto his back. _“It’s not like we made any promises. We didn’t owe each other anything, not even an official breakup. Because what was there to break up?! Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”_

He sighed and rubbed his temples, letting his eyes drift shut. It was only a moment before they flew open again and he launched himself upwards, a strangled cry escaping his throat.

When Jeff closed his eyes, all he could see was her. Launching herself over a couch to save him from Chang during paintball. Sneaking sideways glances at him as they walked through the Greendale campus with their hands in each other’s pockets. Rooting her hands in his hair as she kissed him like her life depended on it in the backseat of his car. Sitting next to him on the piano while filling in for the glee club, close enough for their shoulders to brush when they swayed in time to the music. Dancing at Abed’s party, pulling him into her orbit and not letting him go.

And then spitting out an ‘it’s you’ before turning on her heels and leaving the study room.

 _“Why the fuck can’t I stop thinking about her!? We were just hooking up, we weren’t even exclusive. So what if she’s the reason this whole crazy study group thing started? That doesn’t mean anything,”_ Jeff thought angrily. He reached for another cookie, eating the whole thing in one bite, _“I mean…maybe it does. If she came over right now and wanted to sleep with me again, I’d say yes. No questions asked. But that’s normal! She’s hot, I’m hot, it makes sense. I don’t have to have feelings for her to still want her.”_

But then, a scary thought entered his mind.

 _“Maybe there’s something tying us together that’s more than friendship or sex. Maybe I_ do _have feelings for her.”_

Jeff had pursued Britta for almost an entire year, way longer than he’d ever pursued any other woman for. He’d come to truly know her, considering her a real friend before they’d ever hooked up. Hell, her friendship had been what opened him up to the idea of a committed romantic relationship. (Even though Slater had primarily been a distraction, a replacement for the woman that kept eluding his grasp.) And then, when she finally landed in his arms on the study room table during the fateful paintball game, Jeff felt like maybe he had been disbarred for a reason. The universe had been leading him to this group of people whose love made him better. And specifically, this woman who made him _want_ to be better, but still happily accepted him for who he was.

Then they got tangled up in each other’s lives. They’d sworn that they wouldn’t have a repeat of what happened during paintball, but that promise had been broken after the disastrous space simulator launch. And in the Western ghost town. And after crashing a plane into a Habitat for Humanity house (and maybe in the cockpit of said plane _before_ the crash). And backstage during the glee club performance and in the hot tub on the group’s vacation to Mexico and in an abandoned wing of the haunted house and dozens of less memorable times.

Both of them had insisted that it was just those incidents, just the sex. But Jeff realized that it had always been more than that. It had been buying vegan sausage to cook for her in the mornings and learning each other’s takeout orders and driving her to the vet when little Daniel got sick and always holding onto each other when bad things happened, both in and outside of the group.

Promises could be unspoken. Somehow, Jeff had lost sight of that.

So now, he was mad. Almost pissed off. After all of that, how could Britta just walk away? Place all of the blame on him and turn around as if she hadn’t a care in the world?

Maybe she was just as in denial as he was. Maybe she was sitting alone in her bedroom, petting Daniel or Suzie B, Jr. and eating Goldfish by the handful. Maybe it was conceited of Jeff to believe that she shared whatever feelings he was currently unpacking and processing. But in the midst of all of these thoughts and emotions and realizations, he knew one thing for certain; he had a promise to keep.

He cast the package of Milanos aside and sprung out of bed, looking out the window to his left. Unfortunately, it was raining. Almost torrentially.

 _“Whatever. This would be like one of Abed’s movie moments, right? Yeah. God, when did I become such a sap?”_ Jeff thought, shaking his head and chuckling at himself.

He ran to his coat closet, throwing it open and beginning to root around for his raincoat. Jeff sighed in frustration when he couldn’t immediately locate it, knowing that if he waisted any more time, he might lose the conviction to do what he needed to do. So he shrugged it off and made a run for his sneakers, tying them as fast as he could and not bothering to double knot them.

Jeff scrambled up from the floor and to the door, yanking it open. He was about to dash out into the hallway when he noticed that something was standing in his way. Someone, more accurately.

Britta stood before Jeff, hand raised in a fist as if she were about to knock on his door. Her hair stuck to the side of her face in clumps, water dripping off of her into small puddles on the carpet beneath her. Upon realizing who was in front of her, she slowly lowered her hand and gave him a slightly awkward smile. 

Jeff smiled back, unsure of what to say. Unsure if he was frozen in place or time, feeling as though he might be trapped in something that was hindering his movement.

“Hey,” Britta said, lacing her fingers together in front of her and rocking back on her heels.

They stood on opposite sides of the doorway in complete silence for one moment more, Jeff staring at Britta with a certain amount of disbelief, her gazing back with a sort of timidity that he’s never seen before.

“Hey. What…what brings you here?” he asked, deciding to lean casually against the doorframe and cross his arms over his chest.

She giggled, almost nervously. “Um, I came to talk to you. But you were about to leave, do you have somewhere that you need to be? I-”

“I don’t. I mean, I did. But now I don’t, because here you are!” he said with an equally nervous chuckle.

 _“C’mon, Winger. Get it together,”_ he chided himself.

“Oh? You were coming to see me?’ Britta asked, all visible signs of her anxiety disappearing.

The corner of Jeff’s mouth quirked upwards. “Yeah, I was. I, uh…”

“I’m sorry. About how I handled things earlier. I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of…everything,” she interjected, the words practically rushing out of her.

“Oh, it’s alright,” Jeff said.

“No, it’s not. I was…upset after I realized how we hurt our friends. We had a rough fucking year, and we were too busy, well…fucking, to recognize it,” Britta elaborated.

He gave a dry laugh, standing up straight from the doorframe. “I guess we did. And we were. And…well, what I wanted to tell you was that I wasn’t as honest as I should have been,” Jeff said, face scrunching up as if he might be bracing for an impact of some kind.

“Honest about what?”

“You know how we kept saying that what we were doing was just sex?” he asked, daring himself to look right into her bright blue eyes.

Britta smiled softly. “It wasn’t just sex and we were both scared to admit that it might be something more?”

“Yeah. You hit the nail right on the head,” Jeff said with a laugh, “I think that’s what I was going to say, but it would have been...much less succinct.”

“I was a little worried that you had a Winger speech prepared when you said that you were coming to see me,” Britta admitted, chuckling.

“Honestly? I had no plan whatsoever. I just knew that I had to get to you as soon as possible so that I wouldn’t talk myself out of talking to you,” he said.

“Funny, I had the same thought. I like to think that I’m not the worst at dealing with emotion, but the idea of opening up like this to _you_? Once I decided to come here, I didn’t even give myself time to grab a raincoat. As I’m sure you can tell,” she said, looking herself over and laughing.

Jeff felt a great swell of affection come over him. They were one in the same. Two sides of one coin, the almost-compliments that were a little too similar to be each other’s exact yin or yang.

“You can’t be, because _I’m_ the worst at dealing with emotion, as I’m sure you know. I can barely acknowledge my own feelings, much less share them with anyone else. Particularly feelings like this. And especially since Michelle had been my first real girlfriend in years and that ended…poorly,” he said.

Britta nodded. “I get it. I’ve only had casual boyfriends for as long as I can remember. But I didn’t want you to even be one of them because those relationships all ended. I didn’t want to put the group or our friendship at risk of that.”

Jeff smiled, taking a moment just to admire her. Had he ever known someone who could be as selfless as she could? And how had he taken this long to realize what he had almost lost?

“What made you come to the realization? About us?” he asked.

Britta shrugged. “I don’t know. There wasn’t really a dramatic moment, I was just laying on my couch and petting Suzie B, Jr. when I realized that the only person I really wanted to talk to about what was going on with you was _you_. And that I’d been lying to myself about my feelings for you. I really didn’t want to live in a world where I like-liked Jeff Winger,” she said with a gentle laugh.

He gave what some might label a goofy grin, reaching out to gently stroke the side of her face. “That’s weird, I didn’t want to live in a world where I like-liked Britta Perry. What a crazy coincidence,” he said sarcastically. Britta frowned and swatted Jeff’s hand away, eliciting a laugh from him.

“I’ll do my best to not close myself off as much anymore. I promise,” he said softly, taking one of her hands in his.

She ran her thumb along the inside of his palm and smiled. “I promise to hold you to that,” she said.

Jeff let himself just look at her once more, taking in the details of her face, the way she was standing, how it felt to have her hand in his. Britta was clearly doing some admiring of her own, gazing intently at him with a slightly dazed smile.

“Do you want to talk things out some more? I think I have some of your dumb herbal tea left in my cabinets that we could make. Or-”

“I’d be okay with tabling this discussion and making out like, right now,” Britta suggested, a certain impatience present in her voice.

Jeff laughed, trying to fight the uncontrollable blush spreading across his face. “Alright, I’d be more than okay with that as well. We can resume this discussion at a later date,” he said

Britta nodded eagerly, rushing forward and practically springing up onto Jeff. He was laughing as their lips connected, fumbling to get Britta inside his apartment and close the door without letting her go. He didn’t know how she practically climbed up him so quickly, wrapping her legs around his torso as he spun around to press her against the wall for support. He didn’t even care that she was dripping water all over his carpet as her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders, fingers drifting up the nape of his neck, looking to find purchase on his scalp.

No reoccurring dream could compare to the woman currently wrapped around Jeff Winger. She was the most beautiful hurricane he’d ever had the pleasure of witnessing. And now, he decided to make a second, silent promise. As long as he loved her, he would never even think of leaving her.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't done a lot of third person narration from Jeff's perspective, so that was fun to play with here.
> 
> as always, please leave a comment with any thoughts/opinions/etc. down below! hope you all enjoyed and are doing well! <3


End file.
